Another Dream of the Dead

Note: Two dreams in one day?! I actually had this dream last week when out of town for the holidays.

I have a new job at a lab on a campus. I am low person on the totem pole - washing glassware, keeping the lab generally tidy, being a gopher. It doesn't matter because I am delighted to be in a lab environment again. I saw or met a new student who I instantly wanted to be friends with. He was a bit on the stereotype side of being the sharp-tongued gay guy. He reminded me of a friend I had long ago in my waking life, someone I have always missed. It turned out the new guy was studying for his PhD under my friend L, who had gotten her PhD from and still worked with, my first husband, T. I ended up going to his lab to look for my new friend and seeing T. T was following me somewhere, and when we arrived he teased me about my butt. It was an effort to be good-natured. It was obvious he was still angry and hurt about the bust-up of our marriage, but it was also obvious that he was moving on with his life and didn't want to just hate me.

Note: (hey, 2 dreams in 1 day, now 2 notes in 1 dream!) This didn't have the deep, spiritual feel that my other dreams of the dead have had. I spent lots of time spinning this around. Journaling made me realize it wasn't so much about T as it was about me - how I'm still dealing with my guilt over his suicide. I am hoping that since T seemed to be able to forgive me in the dream, that I will be able to forgive myself in my waking life.

Disagreeing With My Dad (Just Like Waking Life)

My dad and I are discussing a report telling how the actress Jodie Foster has turned down a very lucrative deal. She was offered $5 million per year for 5 years for doing something, but she has to stay the entire 5 years or give back the money she's already gotten. She has turned down the offer because it doesn't align with her values. My dad is horrified. The idea of turning down that kind of money because she doesn't "like" the project, makes him sick. He insists that this is a luxury of the rich.

I don't agree with him. I tell him I would turn down the money if the job included going against my values, try to point out that maybe what's wrong with the world (and the economy) is that money has become more important than other values. He tells me I'm too young still to understand the importance of the security money can buy you, how that's more important than anything else. As in my waking life, I am 40 and have 2 children, but still he thinks my way of being in the world is childish, naive. He doesn't say it, but I know he thinks I'm just a "silly girl" with too many book smarts and not enough hard knocks.

Note: I usually love my dreams for the escape they provide. This was too close to my waking life to be very much fun.

Film Short with Christina Hendricks

I am at a big, outdoor party for something. Not a wedding but maybe a graduation. I am flipping through a magazine that belongs to my mother. I start to play a video that's in the pages. It's a short movie made by a woman I did a film with many years ago. The star is Christina Hendricks (the va va voom redhead made famous by AMC's Mad Men). It's sort of a fairy tale gone wrong plot. Ms. Hendricks is at the party, and I take the magazine to her to show her and tell her that I know the woman in it with her. She seems embarrassed about the short, like it was done before she was famous, and it's not very good. I start to agree with her - probably just because she's beautiful and famous. The film isn't great, obviously low budget, but I point out all the really interesting things about it. The use of color as metaphor is intense. The angle of many of the shots is unique and adds an element of unease that's not explicit in the script. The story itself is thought provoking. And of course Ms. Hendricks is beyond lovely and does an amazing job of selling it.

Note: While it sort of sounds like I was looking at a magazine with an e-reader since it has an embedded video, the video was actually embedding in a print edition. Which would be pretty awesome. The film maker referred to in the dream is a real woman who "friended" me on Facebook yesterday, explaining her otherwise random appearance in this dream. I have no idea why my mind chose Christina Hendricks.

Cross-Country Pursuer

I am on a cross-country drive. I have stopped somewhere in the Midwest to visit friends. After I'm done there I have a stop in Kansas and then it's on to Colorado for a long visit with all my old friends. I go to the company where they all work together. My friend R is leaving the parking lot with a car full of friends just when I'm leaving. I ask if anyone wants to ride with me, and then they can show me the way. Two guys volunteer. We go around the building to the parking lot, but I can't find my truck. We go into a parking garage looking for it even though I know I parked outside. The parking garage is full of twists and turns and doesn't really make much sense. I am still in the structure, but I'm now following narrow passages and stairways trying to escape from someone following me. The building is now at a school, but I'm not sure what it's for. I stumble upon an abandoned room where someone has set up house, but I know they're just squatting, probably unable to afford a "real" place to live, but they've done a great job of making this hidden space comfortable. I continue running from my pursuer, a burly man who seems always just a half step behind me. I push through ceiling tiles, I open doors I don't go through to trick him, I can't ever seem to get a good lead. At some point I realize I'm dreaming and decide to change the dream, but I have a difficult time of it and eventually just wake up.

Note: As a long time nightmare sufferer, I finally taught myself to change the tenor of dreams in college. I got quite good at it. Unfortunately my skills are a bit rusty since I no longer have as many nightmares (but that's a good thing).

The Boat Party

I start out at school studying. I'm afraid my notebooks won't fit in my backpack, but they do. Then as I'm heading to a New Year's Eve party, I meet up with some guys I know in a band. We're in a gym. There's a vampire with a meat hook in his shoulder in the pool. We pull him out and remove the meat hook, but he's in bad shape having lost so much blood in the pool. He wants to feed off of me, but I'm afraid. The guys promise to pull him off if he doesn't behave. I let the vamp feed off of my wrist. Afterwards I ask the guys if they're going to the New Year's Eve party. It's being given by my friend J and his roommate who live on a boat in the harbor. The guys weren't even invited. Turns out there's some sort of rift between them and the roommate. I don't ask specifics since no one seems to want to talk about it. I walk to the harbor with my stuffed backpack. When I get close to the boat I notice lots of people wearing robot-ish costumes, and I wonder if I missed that memo. There is line to get on the boat. J isn't anywhere close to the door, but his roommate is. I ask the roommate to take me to J's room so I can stash my backpack. He's delighted to show me around even after I've gotten rid of the backpack. The boat is huge. He shows me the deck in the back where people are toking up. At the front of the boat, I see my recent ex-boyfriend with his brother. They're having a great time. I'm instantly sad. I go to the deck in back although I don't smoke. I just sit and eat munchies with the few people already there. My ex walks through on his way somewhere else and notices a young boy sitting along. He tells the boy that he can cure him. The boy has some sort of congenital illness that makes him small and will shorten his life considerably. My ex tells him even if he's not cured, he'll certainly live a much longer life if the boy allows him to help. The boy agrees. My ex climbs on the boy's chair, gets very close to his face, and then proceeds to lick his forehead. The connection is felt by everyone in the room. The two of them shake with the energy. My ex's eyes begin to roll into the back of his head, and I know that something is wrong, that's he's gone too far. I'm screaming at him to stop. He finally pulls away and falls to the floor in a faint.

Flooded Beach

I am living in a small shack on the beach of an island with my toddler. We came for a vacation and never left. My toddler pulls me outside to point at the horizon where a storm is building. I walk to the store to get a few things before it comes in. I need a refill on my antidepressants, but the woman at the store can't open the pharmacy, and the pharmacist is gone. I wonder how I'll get through the next few days without it. Then I watch with building horror as the woman starts shuttering things to lock up for the storm. It finally occurs to me that our little shack on the beach will not survive what is coming. My toddler and I take refuge with the family who owns the store. They live on the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building, and it is partway up a hill from the beach. The water comes into the house anyway and keeps rising. We escape with the family, who have 2 preteen sons, out the attic, scrambling up the rest of the hill. We walk across the flat, mesa-like hill while water pours down and swirls around us. When we get to the other side, we see that the beach town there is sitting under blue skies. When the water has gone, we go back to the family's house, and we move in with them.

Then I'm suddenly a man, and my child is preteen girl. I claim to be a novelist, but I am working at the other village making and painting ceramics. I'm very brooding. My daughter sneaks out of our rooms in the house one night and goes to meet one of the young men in his bedroom. I catch her there and yell about how I've given her everything and this is how she repays me. I pull out a large case that, as the observer, I am scared contains a gun, but it is some sort of giant compass. I need it to write. I have realized that I have created this situation by refusing to write, and now it's my job to fix it.

A Whiter Smile

While visiting my parents, I come across a bottle of tooth whitening powder in the bathroom. It belongs to my brother. It claims to work in one application. I dip my finger in the powder and scrub my teeth with it. It does work, leaving my teeth noticably whiter. It also makes my gums bleed quite a bit.

Note: I had a Freudian psychotherapist once who told me that dreaming about losing teeth is a castration issue.